So, what happens the next time Twitter tweaks any noses at Peoria City Hall? Call in the Navy Seals? Chuck Norris?

The Justice League of America?

Not a bad idea. It might cause Peoria less of a headache than calling the cops.

By launching a tweet counter-attack, Mayor Ardis poured gasoline on a tiny spark — one all but extinguished — and triggered an explosion of attention.

Yet, amid all the smolder, he does make an interesting call-out, one we’ll discuss in a moment: He says that if you want to stand on the First Amendment to scream to the world, man up and state your name.

“Let this big bad-ass put his name out there,” Ardis says.

When you’re in the public eye, you get all sorts of guff: in the media, in public, online, everywhere. It can range from reasoned opinion to crazy babbling.

“I have a pretty good sense of humor,” the mayor says. “You can take as many shots as possible. I have a pretty thick skin.”

Thick skin? Indeed, his third term alone attests to an ability to withstand criticism better than most people, in or out of politics.

Further, Ardis is no wienie. He played rugby. He rides a Harley. He hits shot-and-a-beer joints. He’s a regular guy. I like that.

Still, we’ve had occasional chats in which he has expressed his irritation with the press. Like many public officials, he thinks the media stress the negative when it could be more positive. But whereas other public officials just shake their heads, the mayor gets noticeably moody — to me, at least — over what he perceives as media inadequacies. After nine years, I would think he’d be able to roll with that a little better.

Even so, Ardis says the Twitter messages were a different story in terms of his ability to simply stand there and take jabs. As he points out, a newspaper can’t reprint the fake Ardis tweets. Well, it can, but we chose not to.

“It was disgusting. It was filth,” Ardis says. “I struggle to see the humor or satire.”

Humor? Well, to this observer, they didn’t seem funny. But satire? Though the quality of the fake tweets certainly didn’t reach the caliber of Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel, bad comedy isn’t necessarily illegal or unconstitutional.

And maybe Ardis wouldn’t have said a thing, if people hadn’t told his mom, wife and kids about the tweets.

“My family has to deal with all sorts of stuff because of the position I’m in,” Ardis says. “ ... But this was different. This was offensive.”

Further, he was miffed that the account initially didn’t identify itself as a parody.

“People who knew me understood that it wasn’t really me,” Ardis says. “But if people didn’t know me personally, how would they know it was supposed to be a parody? ... If he had put it up as parody, it still would’ve ticked me off. But at least people would’ve known it was parody.”

Though I make my living thanks to the First Amendment, I can empathize with one Ardis complaint: the anonymous element. Satirists (think National Lampoon) often sign their name. If you want to get nasty, why not take credit for it?

“There are so many sick people out there. They want to say what they want. But they don’t want their name on it. They want to say it’s their (constitutional) right. Maybe it is. But that doesn’t make it right.”

Still, even if a law was broken — the courts can decide that matter — did Ardis’ police complaint do more harm than good?

The account had just 50 followers. That’s not a cesspool of slime — it’s just a thimbleful among 550 million Twitter accounts. And the account had vanished by the time the Peoria police raided a residence in a tweet counter-attack.

So think about those 50 followers. Take that number, multiply it by 1,000, and you haven’t even reached the Journal Star’s daily circulation. Then add second-hand readership, plus online hits. Then there’s local TV news coverage, plus other news outlets and websites jumping on the story.

As the snowball grows and grows, it’s good to remember an important doctrine, though it has nothing to do with constitutional rights or anything that highbrow.

It’s simply this: big dogs don’t sweat small dogs. If a poodle nips a pit bull, and the pit bull bites back, no one noticed that the poodle started the fight. They just think, “Bad, bad pit bull.”

And that’s how it comes out here. To outsiders, the Twitter account was a pea-shooter, but the response was a bazooka.

Indeed, Ardis says he has gotten backlash emails — some as vile as the tweets — ripping him for stomping on the First Amendment.

And now multiple new fake Ardis accounts have popped up on Twitter, though these are actually somewhat funny. “@RealPeoriaMayor” tweets, “(I am the) completely Real Mayor of Peoria AND I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN IF YOU PRETEND TO BE ME.” This account has since been suspended. Meanwhile, “@NotMayorArdis” writes, “I am not Mayor Ardis. Otherwise, I would be busy having people arrested for creating fake accounts.”

And in the real, non-Twitter world, Peoria is taking a beating in terms of perception. For example, in this newspaper, an attorney in Washington, D.C., said he doubts the charge (false personation of a public official, a mere misdemeanor) would hold up in court. He said, in part, “This looks like a classic case of small-town justice.”

Super. Peoria is Mayberry.

Maybe you don’t care. Maybe you don’t worry about such statements. Maybe you’re strong enough to shrug off what others say.

Tell that to the mayor.

PHIL LUCIANO is a Journal Star columnist. He can be reached at pluciano@pjstar.com, facebook.com/philluciano, 686-3155 or (800) 225- 5757, Ext. 3155. Follow him on Twitter @LucianoPhil.